I am hating life.
I can’t seem to communicate.
I have managed to get a number of people to be snarky at me. And they shouldn’t be. I think they wouldn’t be if they knew what really going on. To me, this means my ability to communicate adequately has fallen off. The only common factor is me.

I pride myself in my ability to communicate so this bothers me a great deal. I am getting rather emotional about it. I feel trapped and frustrated and hopeless and disconnected. So I am going to hide in my cave until it is over, it is always better to chose something than be forced to take it. It will clear up, this has happened in the past, it will happen again. I just don’t know how long it will take. It could take hours, or it could take days. Maybe it is related to how dry the air is. That always sets me on edge.

There will probably be no noticeable change. I just won’t be reaching out when I normally would. Things will be a lot more surface level instead of my normal digging to something deeper.

Comments are disabled because, obviously, I can’t trust this post to adequately express what is really going on.

Feeling lonely.
With the big move, my work place went from an open bull pen of 12 people to cubes. There wasn’t room for my team with the rest so we are off on our own. I am isolated from everyone else except my boss. We have this little window between us and he has asked me not to disturb him unless I need to. The only person at work I have easy access to doesn’t want me distracting him. My best friend at work who I go over and bug is off today. Because I had Monday off, we only got to see each other two days this week. She isn’t here for me to go bug. Because of the upcoming holiday, we will see even less of each other. The others in my group are beginning to feel like strangers to me. Unless I have an excuse to go talk with them, I don’t want to. More mindless small talk type of stuff. I have work to do but it is long and involved and IT is messing with my computer and that has meant I needed to be able to quit everything and reboot a number of times today. I don’t want to be in the middle of stuff when that happens.

There are people I could reach out to, people that wouldn’t mind talking with me, people that might even want to talk with me, but my enthusiasm has taken a nose dive. Trying to come up with something to talk about, trying to actually be interested in what other people are saying, trying to figure out something to entertain them is not worth the energy right now.

This isn’t a cry for attention or help. This isn’t a “please talk with me.” It is more of a State of The Gina notice. I honestly can’t think of what would help so I am asking for nothing. Anything I can think of feels like it would just annoy me.

Just practicing that Admit-to-things thing.

Note: Please, don’t bother leaving just *hugs* While it would probably bother me if there were no comments, I can guarantee *hugs* comments will drive me nuts. If you can’t be more creative than that, don’t bother.

The euphoria bubble has deflated. Reality has reasserted itself. A couple of small things happened Tuesday evening that brought things into a different focus.

This post was really good when it was going through my head this morning while avoiding getting up. Most of that eloquence is gone now.

Most of the benefits from this last weekend are gone. I realize this is a knee-jerk opposite reaction. Get too much from one direction, must go about as far as in the other direction to balance things out. Can’t live in a new head space, only approach it slowly with a lot of see-sawing back and forth.

It is interesting to Know that what I am feeling and seeing are creations of defense mechanisms and thereby they must be distorting my view of reality. But it feels Real. I guess this is where the idea of acknowledging your defense mechanisms and accepting whatever it is that you are going through gets practiced. It doesn’t mean stop thinking/feeling/seeing what you do, just accept them and know that they are distortions. Maybe there won’t be as much invested in them and they will be easier to let go of later, when it is time.

Grrrr….Arrrrg.

Living the examined life is not easy.

Well, I have had another moving, inspiring, transformative weekend. Things were shaken up and landed in new places. Hopefully they are really in places that fit better and provide for a healthier Gina. It feels like it.

I was given things that I desperately want and have been afraid to acknowledge or accept. Hopefully these things are real and will last and aren’t just constructions of the events and hopefully they won’t fade. That has happened to me in the past. I have some learning to do to to make room for these things and how to deal with them.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Everything I have is not left over from before but what I currently have. It needs to be dealt with based on where I am now, not what I had planned from before.

I just wanted to mark the event.

I finally, at least, have the pictures from the Halloween Season online. They aren’t in any pretty format, and are lacking any kind of explanations but they are reachable for those that want to see them and download copies. For gallery 45 (the weekend of Halloween) I even resorted to posting the Photoshop default web pages.

And for the final costume count, here are images to go with the listing:

1) Sept 19, Sky Captain and the Worlds of Tomorrow – Aviator

2) Oct 9, Mutant Party – Geek Grrl

3) Oct 22, Waltz Macabre – Goth Queen

4) Oct 23, Witches Ball – Oriental dress

5) Oct 29 day, Work – 40s Secretary

6) Oct 29, Skylab – Ant Queen

7) Oct 30, Gaskells – Valkyries with the Danger Twins

8) Oct 31 day, picnic – Goth and Skulls

9) Oct 31 night, DNA Lounge – Black Rabbit ala Alice

Oh yeah, by the way… today is my birthday

Season Costume count working backwards:

Oct 31 night, DNA Lounge – Black Rabbit ala Alice
Oct 31 day, picnic – Goth and Skulls
Oct 30, Gaskells – Valkyries with the Danger Twins
Oct 29, Skylab – Ant Queen
Oct 29 day, Work – 40s Secretary
Oct 23, Witches Ball – Oriental dress
Oct 22, Waltz Macabre – Goth Queen
Oct 9, Mutant Party – Geek Grrl
And if we stretch is just a little, Sept 19, Sky Captain and the Worlds of Tomorrow – Aviator

8 and possibly 9 costumes in one Season. That is a record I don’t think I ever want to break. It sure makes up for missing most of Halloween last year. Next year, can I be reasonable instead?

Unfortunately, I can’t post pictures yet. I am having connection problems with my site and probably switching. I will post when they are available.
Rachel has hers from the picnic online here.

So, this last weekend has got to be the busiest one with the most unrelated events I have ever had. OK, maybe not ever but the most in my current memory buffer. Having Halloween on a weekend is harsh.

Friday at work, I wore my grandmother’s suit from the 40s. I love this suit and it looked pretty good. People didn’t realize that I was in costume until I told them. Not surprising since this is a level I will do on “normal” days as well. Gee, Gina doing a subtle costume, imagine that.

Friday night was the Skylab party and the theme was 50s B horror and scifi movies. I dressed up as the Evil Ant Queen. My shtick was that II produce eggs (deviled eggs, pesto – sun dried tomato pesto – regular deviled, there is a reason I am so booked on time), eat one and become my minion. I had a nice time hanging with friends I have developed over this last year and even got a few interesting things at the Skylab auction to give away for Xmas.

Saturday morning/afternoon had me running around town trying to find things for the picnic Sunday and not finding what I want. I ended up making more food, and packing my Sat costume, sleep over stuff, sunday picnic food and utensils, and my sunday costume and heading over the Palazzo (home of the Danger Twins). We finished up the Valkyrie costumes and we looked great. Off to Gaskells we go. I didn’t get to dance as much as I wanted to. Besides, I had only 4 hours of sleep and was getting tired. The evening ended early due to someone not feeling well, and while I am saddened that they felt so awful, I did appreciate the earlier end to the evening.

Sunday morning we got up and thanks to the time change, got to the cemetery on time to set up. I was actually excited. Fresne blew up balloons while I attempted to put up signs. Then we took some pictures and started laying out the picnic stuff. More people arrived over the day, I think around 20. I managed not to do my normal “everyone is here because of me so I need to be sure everyone is taken care of” freak. People had a lovely time. I had a lovely time. It was a nice day. Sun, shade, not to hot. The site was lovely. Very good picnic. I love the fact that all of my friends (except those that decided to take pictures instead of participate) were willing and eager to go into an empty tomb for a group shot. *sigh* I love the type of people my friends are. And to add just the right tough of surreal, as we were gathering up the last of the picnic, only something like 6 of us left, this couple that had been driving around in an old and interesting saab stopped near us. The woman got out and walked up to me and presented me with a headless baby doll. With no words she went back to the car and they drove off. It was delightful and weird. Why me instead of fresne or one of the others is still a mystery. Maybe because I was the most colorful.

I talked with dkferret for hours afterwards and then went home to get a little rest. Thank god for that time change. That night was Rosin Coven, DJs from New Wave City, Dark Sparkle and Death Guild at the DNA Lounge. Fresne, capricious-K and I did our Dark Alice set, goth Alice, the Red queen, and the black rabbit. WinterO looked good in basic black with that delightful flowing coat of his. I like Rosin Coven but they are close to the edge for me. Some of there stuff is great, other stuff is beyond me. This time they did a parody of Spinal Tap and played Bun Henge setting a Stonehenge set up made of hot dog buns on fire, as well as the wig the xylophonist was wearing. High entertainment. I walked Fresne to her car, got dropped off at mine and after a look at what I was leaving behind, I headed home. Halloween was done.

My weekend continued though. I had the next day off and after dropping my car off at the shop, capricious_k and I went shopping. Nov 1st is my first requested vacation day in January. This is my Sale day. While capricious_k didn’t find much to tempt her, I dropped $80 on things I have been wanting for quite some time. I am very happy with my purchases. Some are for the car. Some are for me and only a few are for actual costume type stuff. After a full day of shopping, crashing at home Monday night was delightful. But I still had things to get ready. I went through the election crap and got informed and made my choices and finished my mom’s birthday and Xmas presents.

Tues saw me walking to the polling place in the morning to do my part. After that, I rented a car. I am very please with Enterprise and highly recommend the Berkeley one. A few errands later, I headed to the airport to visit with my mom during her layover on the way to Bali. My mom and I are not getting along all that well but we did ok. A shopping trip to Chinatown, soup at La Central, a quick visit to Grace Cathedral and petting pomeranians in the park, dinner at chilis and back to the airport for her flight out. I am very pleased that we managed to have a day together and mostly avoided getting snippy. I got home at 10:30pm. The next day was work and I just wanted another day off to recover from my long weekend.

Yes it has taken me days to get this written. Life is so rough, *le sigh*

I got my car back yesterday and I realized how much I missed it. I was ridiculously glad to have my baby home. A silly smile crosses my face when I walk up to it. I fit inside it. *sigh* The PT Cruiser was nice but is not my car. I was thinking of buying one and now I am glad I didn’t (100 miles, 7.4 gallons of gas, No thank you). I think I am a little too attached to my Mini-Hearse. *sigh* When something serious happens to it, it is going to really hurt. But in the meantime, I love my baby.

On another track, man oh man, you people write a lot. I am only gone for two days work days and still can’t catch up. Between Halloween and the elections and being two days behind, I am guessing there will be some LJ posts I just will end up missing. If anything major or stunning was written about, you may want to point me in that direction.

Saw this on rimmblemethis and wynkat1313‘s LJs

Root: under-active (-13%)
Sacral: open (50%)
Navel: open (25%)
Heart: under-active (6%)
Throat: open (63%)
Third Eye: open (25%)
Crown: under-active (6%)
Percentages go from -100% to +100%

Ah not as balanced as I thought I was or hope to be, but really not surprised. I don’t really know much about chakras but they have a nice simple explanation of each.
my take on it all